When I put my computer into sleep mode, it will wake up while I'm away from it. There's nothing near the computer that could move the mouse or accidentally press a button and I have no idea what might be causing it.

I tried checking what woke it, apparently LASTWAKE only tells me that it has been in sleep mode, not what woke it up.

I also couldn't find anything in my Power Options regarding Sleep that seems off. Poking around in the Event Viewer I notice the following:

Wake on network activity, perhaps? I've also owned more than one laptop that woke itself up for seemingly no reason at all - when the lid was closed and inside a laptop bag
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agent86Oct 27 '12 at 21:22

Yup, same for me. In my case, a 3G card that kept trying to dial out. Whenever I put the laptop to sleep, I'd power off all the radios first.
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user3463Oct 27 '12 at 21:23

It might be my laptop or NAS, but how can I figure out what might be causing it?
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Ivo Flipse♦Oct 27 '12 at 21:23

I'm not in front of my Win8 box at the moment, but does the event log have any details about what triggered the power state change?
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Nathan OsmanOct 27 '12 at 21:30

3

Check out your Power Management Options on your Control Panel> Power Settings>Change plan settings>Change advanced power settings. -> “Multimedia settings” option, “When sharing media.” ->”Allow the computer to sleep. Check other options one by one while you’re at it.
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avirkNov 2 '12 at 2:48

7 Answers
7

I've had this problem before when I had network shares that were hosted on the sleeping machine, but accessed by other machines on the network. There are some settings for network cards that determine if it can wake the machine from sleep, and under what conditions:

This TechNet article explains the power management settings for network devices on Win7. There's not a Win8 version of this page yet, but I assume they are somewhat similar.

Beyond this, many other devices with similar checkboxes to allow for waking - I'd probably advise turning as many of these off as possible, and seeing if your problem persists. If it does, you might consider a binary search style approach to figure out which one is the offending sleep-disturber.

Given that I can still wake my computer by clicking on my mouse, even though I disabled it, I think your answer must have been what solved my problem. So enjoy the bounty :-)
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Ivo Flipse♦Nov 3 '12 at 11:27

@IvoFlipse Are you saying you disabled the wake-on-mouse trigger, but you could still wake it up with the mouse? That doesn't sound right. I just want to know if it was your network adapter that was waking up your computer.
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sammygSep 14 '14 at 10:04

@sammyg sadly I can't check this anymore, since I've long since upgraded the relevant parts. But yes, it didn't sound right to me either
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Ivo Flipse♦Sep 16 '14 at 6:27

If you type in your elevated command prompt powercfg /waketimers, it will display a list of scheduled tasks that will wake the computer. You might discover what could be causing this to occur.

If it is a wake timer that's causing this behavior, if you go into the Advanced power settings, under the Sleep category, you can disable Wake Timers. This might fix your issue, if this is the culprit.

For instance, I see this when executing that command:

EDIT:

Also, by the way, I did recall this occurring with my laptop once. It took a bit of troubleshooting, but I discovered that the culprit was my Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse. I discovered that the USB dongle (which received its wireless signal), caused the computer to periodically wake up, even though the mouse wasn't powered on. I fixed the issue by finding the USB device in the Device Manager and, under Properties, turning off "Allow this device to wake this computer". However, I found a more prudent solution was to just not leave it plugged into the laptop all the time. :)

I have this as well and "There are no active wake timers in the system." That said, it could very well be that additional wake timers are set when the system goes to sleep.
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badpOct 27 '12 at 21:51

It says: There are no active wake timers in the system.
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Ivo Flipse♦Oct 27 '12 at 21:51

Re: your edit. I have an external mouse and keyboard plugged in at all times but normally those devices are unable to wake up the system anyway... I guess I'll try turning that switch off then.
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badpOct 27 '12 at 21:55

1

Nope, no joy. I found my computer was still awake when I woke up :(
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badpOct 28 '12 at 7:37

How were you able to determine that it was your Microsoft Arc Touch mouse that was waking up your computer? Were you able to see that somehow in the system?
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sammygSep 14 '14 at 10:12

I like to wake up my computer with the mouse and the keyboard. However, somehow the Logitech wireless mouse woke up the laptop with a slight motion. So I disabled it, and now I stick to waking up the computer with the keyboard space button.
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olee22Jul 19 '13 at 6:55

There might be a scheduled task for the night that wakes up the computer.

I would check "Schedule tasks" (or whatever it is called on Windows 8), and specifically
in your case the task of Microsoft / Windows / Time Synchronization / Conditions tab / check-box "Wake the computer to run this task".

You can also disallow all wake-up timers in Power Options / Advanced settings / Sleep / Allow wake timers.

Wade through all the scheduled tasks in Task Scheduler and, under Conditions, make sure that "Wake the computer to run this task" is NOT set (except for those where you may actually want this action). You can also control whether the task runs on battery or not, if you have a laptop.

Sometimes there are several things in parallel behind a problem, which was my case. There were several things that woke my laptop at night occasionally. I had to alter all these:

LAN-card, Wifi-card: Switch off network card "Allow this device to wake the computer"

Logitech wireless mouse: Switch off "Allow this device to wake the computer"

Mouse/keyboard in Logitech unifying controller "Allow this device to wake the computer"

Hard drive maintenance schdeuled at 03:00 AM(defragmenter)

Windows Backup scheduled at 03:00 AM

Windows Update scheduled at 02:00 AM

Windows Time synchronisation

Multimedia streaming

Shared folders on the hard drive

I changed the settings in the Network Card properties, Mouse properties, Time settings, Windows Backup. I also run command prompt: powercfg /waketimers.

Then I went through all the sub folders of in Task Scheduler, and modified all remaining tasks to run during weekdays, at lunch time or at dinner time. I've also set to have an idle period of 15 minutes, and to stop if I resume using the laptop. For example windows backup slows down my hard drive access, and I don't want it to interrupt my work, and it will run next day anyway. See the two screenshots below.

Start menu\**Task Scheduler**\[tasks]\**Conditions**\**Wake* the computer to run this task**

I like to wake up my laptop with the mouse and keyboard, but then I disabled the mouse. It woke the laptop even just by shaking the table a bit, and sometime even without movement (probably due to the wireless connection of the mouse). So now, I stick to the space bar (it is a wired external keyboard).

Otherwise, I have Windows 8 Pro, on a 2013 model Sony S13 laptop, with UEFI bios.

The "regular maintenance" setting can also be accessed through:
Control Panel\System and Security\Action Center\Automatic Maintenance